Psychological Usability Heuristics

Translating Susan Weinschenk's UX psychology facts into a checklist of heuristic principles that can be used to evaluate interfaces.

Article No :734 | September 28, 2011 | by Jordi Sánchez

Some time ago, Susan Weinschenk wrote about the psychologist’s view of UX design, listing a number of facts about the human mind that can be directly applied to interface design. And I think that's an important point; although usability experts try to put the user in the center of every step of the design process, formalized principles and best practices usually only address technical aspects of the development of interfaces. That's the case with most of the principles used when evaluating interfaces in heuristic evaluations.

So why don't we use Susan’s psychological facts as heuristic principles when evaluating interfaces, instead of just the technical ones? To that end, I have translated Susan's points into a checklist of heuristic principles that can be used to evaluate interfaces. I have created it in the form of a spreadsheet to make evaluations easier. Here you have it:

Of course, the translation of psychological facts into heuristics is subjective, and this work may be updated and/or expanded at any time. But I think this is a good start to approach usability from a more human perspective.

Feel free to use this spreadsheet for your own work (you may have to download or make a copy before). Any feedback about this work will be welcome!

I have contacted Susan Weinschenk explaining her this idea, and this is her kind reply:

I haven't read 100 Things (yet), but I have read her previous book and multiple articles in her blog. Would 100 Things lead to 100 heuristic principles? It seems like a lot of work for me alone, but maybe if this first iteration achieves some success, people will be willing to help me to expand this tool further.

About the Author(s)

Jordi Sánchez is an Information Systems Engineer who tries to develop his work in the border areas between human and computers, and between research and real projects. Currently he works at the Institute of Computer Technology (ITI) in Valencia, Spain, as a Project Leader on projects related to software usability and accessibility. He is also working on his HCI master's thesis about User-Centered Design. He occasionally writes on his personal web page, and he's also on Twitter @jordisan.

Comments

Krish Mandal

October 7, 2011

I have and am getting through the 100 Things.. book, and it has a wealth of knowledge. Some of it reintroduces concepts from her NeuroWeb book but there is lots more. The book is easily digestible and I recommend everyone get it and start chewing through it.
This concept of the heuristics from rules is definitely harder than it looks. Your spreadsheet is off to a good start. My first comment (and I may have more later) is that the statements need to be from only one particular point of view, either the system or the user. As is, the statements are mixed point-of-view, and so it makes it somewhat harder to follow. I think when you do a couple of iterations of this, it will be a very valuable tool indeed. I've long been looking to have something like this. I ran across another spreadsheet once, and it looked interesting (I believe it was from Xerox) but it was a bit complex.